Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2025
Floor Speech
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Mr. BEYER. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chair, I rise today in opposition to this budget resolution.
This budget is disastrous for the American economy. It will balloon our deficits, lead to higher interest rates, and make the things Americans buy every day more expensive. It will slash critical investments in the things that make us healthier, safer, and more productive, things like cancer research, aviation security, and our National Park System. It will decimate critical programs that support the people we represent, stripping healthcare for millions and making it harder for families to put food on the table and make ends meet. All of this is for billionaires and corporations to get tax cuts they do not need and that our country cannot afford.
I am pleased to do this with my friend, Chairman Schweikert. I also believe in math, and I rarely brag, but I am good at math.
Americans have been clear. They want lower prices and an economy that works for them. Yet, instead of focusing on making life easier for American families, at every turn, this administration and my Republican colleagues have engaged in a scorched-earth policy, a policy that creates chaos across the country as the richest person on the planet eliminates services that our Nation depends upon.
My friend from South Carolina earlier said that the policies would bankrupt our country. What does he mean? Healthcare for our families? Food for the working poor who overwhelmingly live in Republican districts?
Sure, get rid of any identified bloat, as every President does, but this is a budget about billionaires, not about every American, the women, men, and children who we represent. Yes, I want to move toward a much smaller deficit budget.
I listen to David Schweikert every closing afternoon during his Special Order hours. I hate the higher interest costs, but who pays? Our families or the 1,000 billionaires, that small percentage, 1 percent or less, of the American population that has way more wealth than they could ever spend in lifetimes to come?
Republicans have long sung from the altar of fiscal responsibility, yet the plan they put in front of us today is a fiscal sacrilege. It depends on fantasy math and ignores that their deficit-busting tax breaks will add at least $4.6 trillion to our Nation's credit card and even more interest that our families must pay.
This interest has real costs. It slows economic growth. It depresses the standard of living. It leads to higher inflation and higher interest rates. It makes it even harder for families already faced with high prices and borrowing costs to make ends meet.
Wasteful, woke, and weaponized policies, my friend from Texas said. That is a very small percentage of the Federal budget. You can never achieve what is in this budget resolution on wasteful, woke, and weaponized policies.
With this Republican plan, how do they address it? They double down on the policies that will widen the growing wealth gap of this Nation by giving billionaires trillions in handouts and providing pennies to the middle class.
According to the Treasury Department, the top 1 percent of Americans, those making over $750,000 a year, can expect to get an annual tax cut of over $32,000. Working families will see a tiny fraction of that.
Of course, the other main beneficiaries will be the wealthiest executives of the wealthiest corporations at a time when corporate profits are at an all-time high. Americans who rely on government services will be told they need to make sacrifices to pad their profit margins even further. How does that make any sense?
To pay for these tax cuts for the ultrawealthy, the Republican budget proposes to cut programs Americans rely on to afford healthcare and to put food on the table.
Almost 100 million Americans, including seniors, children, families, and those from every corner of this country, depend on Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act to afford medical care. Yet, this budget would slash almost $900 billion from these critical programs, ripping away lifesaving coverage and raising healthcare costs for those who rely on them.
At a time when prices at grocery stores continue to climb, this budget would make it even harder for the 40 million Americans who rely on SNAP to put food on the table.
The budget we are considering today will do nothing to support the economic growth of this Nation. It will benefit the wealthiest at the expense of those who make this country work.
Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to reject it, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, while we are doing math, when I divide $2 trillion in savings and cuts over 10 years, I get $200 billion a year.
Madam Chair, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Clark), the whip of the House Democratic Caucus.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, to add to the distributional impacts, the top 5 percent pay 38 percent of the taxes, but they have more than 60 percent of the wealth. The bottom 10 percent pay very little but live hand-to-mouth, including more than 12 percent of our children.
Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Aguilar), the distinguished chair of the House Democratic Caucus.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore), a distinguished member of the Ways and Means Committee and the Joint Economic Committee.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield the gentlewoman from Wisconsin an additional 15 seconds.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Casten), who is a distinguished member of the Joint Economic Committee and our preeminent environmental economist.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Krishnamoorthi), who is the distinguished ranking member of the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Morelle), who is a distinguished member of the House Administration Committee.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez), who is the distinguished ranking member of the Small Business Committee.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici), a member of the Education and Workforce Committee.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano), the ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Horsford), a distinguished member of the Ways and Means Committee.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Espaillat), a distinguished member of the Appropriations Committee.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez), a distinguished and unenviable member of the Rules Committee.
Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ. Madam Chair, Republicans are attacking women's ability to afford life as a mom or a daughter.
Medicaid supports more than 40 percent of all births in the United States.
Our grandmothers and parents in nursing homes rely on Medicaid to pay their health bills. Their caregivers, who are mostly women, depend on Medicaid themselves.
Over 37 million children rely on Medicaid and CHIP. Republicans would strip this essential healthcare from women across the country. Why? To give tax breaks to their billionaire bros.
Women need to know how they will be impacted wherever they live.
Earlier today, we heard Representative Valadao acknowledge that his voters depend on Medicaid and are upset. Indeed, 507,000 of his constituents receive Medicaid, but he said he will vote ``yes'' on the bill.
I need women across the country to visit the Democratic Women's Caucus website to find out how these cuts will impact them and how much money billionaires and millionaires will make from women's economic pain.
Republicans should stand with their moms and not the billionaires.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
With respect to my friend from Arizona, that is not what I heard. We heard that this budget resolution, as put together, promises cuts that we are desperately afraid of.
When we do the math, in Congressman Schweikert's district, Arizona 1, people who count on SNAP to put food on the table are 85,000; Medicaid recipients at risk of losing their healthcare, 127,000; Affordable Care Act recipients who will see their premium payments go up by varying amounts, 44,000. We would love to see a budget worked out that somehow gives a lie to those frightening numbers.
Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Min), a distinguished member of the Joint Economic Committee.
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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Vasquez), a distinguished member of the Agriculture Committee and Armed Services Committee.
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Mr. BEYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Let me just respond to my good friend from Arizona. No, that is not what Democrats want. We don't want to see taxes go up for average, middle-class Americans at all. This is what our budget experts say, based on the budget resolution before us, as my friend Mr. Schweikert knows well: To achieve significant cuts, the kind of cuts that you are talking about, inevitably we have to look at Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
We look at the fact that in Virginia, just eliminating Medicaid Advantage is 660,000 Virginians. We see that 46 percent of the children in America receive their healthcare through Medicaid. When we look at Medicare, it is beyond belief what that would do.
I am looking forward to somehow seeing how you achieve the massive budget cuts that are in this resolution without touching those. That is why you have heard so much concern today about what this will do to the average American people.
It is not that we don't want to revisit not raising taxes on the American public. We also just don't want to cut away their healthcare, their SNAP benefits, their ability to put food on the table, and the like.
Mr. Chair, I am ready to close when the distinguished chair of the Joint Economic Committee tells me it is time. I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. BEYER. Mr. Chair, I will be happy to retract. I also notice that our anxiety about Social Security will not go away.
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Mr. BEYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.
In doing so, let me first begin by saying that my good friend, John Larson, on the Ways and Means Committee has for years promoted Social Security 2100, which would actually fix it for the rest of this century.
Mr. Chairman, President Trump and the Republican majority were elected last November to deliver on a simple promise, to lower costs for Americans. Unfortunately, this budget does not do that.
My Republican friends have decided that providing billions of dollars in tax breaks for a few millionaires and billionaires is worth ordinary Americans bearing, as Elon Musk put it last year, some temporary hardship. That hardship brought about by this budget will come in many forms and may not mean much to the richest man in history, but it will certainly mean a lot to ordinary people.
It will grow our debt by $4.6 trillion. It will lead to higher interest rates and raising prices on goods that Americans pay for every day. It will cut crucial government services that keep us safe, healthy, and productive. It will strip healthcare and food assistance from tens of millions of Americans who are already struggling to make ends meet.
What are Americans getting in exchange for this hardship? Tax cuts for billionaires and corporations that they do not need and that our country cannot afford.
Mr. Chair, this is a bad deal. I urge all of my colleagues to reject this proposal. I yield back the balance of my time.
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